Criminal Law Legislation in the Fight against Terrorism - Comparing Great Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Germany

Seminar paper from the year 2003 in the subject Law - Comparative Legal Systems, Comparative Law, grade: A, Victoria University of Wellington (Victoria Law School), course: International Law, language: English, abstract: The fight against terrorism has two distinct objectives. First, it implies resolving 'political' disputes, political in its broadest sense, comprising different areas such as the division between the rich and the poor or the denouement of religious tensions. Or, to state it even broader: the first objective is to deal with the roots and the causes of terrorism. Secondly, the fight against terrorism means maintaining order at home, so as not to allow terrorists to reach their objective of destroying the core values in our society. Moreover, it allows the government to gain time while the international community works on the first objective. The main prospect in maintaining law and order at home is to put terrorists to trial. Thus criminal law plays an important role in the fight against terrorism. This paper focuses exclusively on the second objective and its purpose is to survey and compare the legislation related to criminal law and terrorism in the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Germany. The following chapters are divided into the countries experience with terrorism and an overview on their criminal law relevant in the fight against terrorism. A comparison of the terrorist legislations in these countries will lead to an evaluation of the different approaches and an answer to the question if terrorism should be defined at all in criminal law.